All right, folks - I was taking a long break from 2+2 prompted by its inclusion onto the black list by the Russian internet censor on February 7. Of course it's very easy to switch a VPN on, but the need to do so made posting a bit less fun (I hate being reminded about who is the president) and I tried to get rid of my forum addiction. The break didn't help, though

The life at my new place isn't going to happen until autumn because my budget has become a bit too tight and a lot of poker grind is required in the coming months - I don't even have much energy for The Sims 4 grind that I was going to start soon.

An even funnier aspect of the law is that Stars has the right to advertise its legal live poker series in Sochi (PS Championship) but has no right to place a link to its online poker client download onto its live series info site.

You probably haven't seen the modern buildings of Moscow City,the Khodynka Field and 'the new territory' of Moscow State University (which is near the famous Stalin-time Main Building too). Russian cities are experiencing the same onslaught of poorly thought out skyscrapers as London, Shanghai etc.

It has become a bit easier to get around Moscow as a non-Russian speaker; at least, the signposts in the centre and the announcements in the Metro are in both Russian and English now, as part of the preparation for the World Football Championship.

It depends on how you get from the Domodedovo airport to the city. Assuming that you take the Aeroexpress train, you can buy a combined Aeroexpress + Metro ticket for 560 rubles (for 1 Aeroexpress trip + 1 metro trip) in a ticket office at the airport. I recommend this because the lines at the ticket offices of the Paveletskaya station tend to be long and it's preferable to wait until you get to a less crowded station if you wish to buy the Troika (see below).

To move around Moscow further, you can buy the Troika card at any metro station, top it up with several hundred rubles and use it on the metro and street transport (buses, trolleybuses, trams). It works like PayPass, you don't even need to insert it anywhere - just touch the validator with your card when you enter the metro or a vehicle.

Then the 90-minute tariff will be applied automatically on your second touch-in (then any further changes between vehicles will be free until 90 minutes elapse since the first touch-in*, the only limitation is that you'll be charged again if you enter the metro for the second time), there's no need to buy a separate ticket for it.

The tariffs section in English is outdated - the current tariff is 35 rubles for the first boarding + 19 more rubles for the second one, the third and further boardings within the 90 minutes since the first one are free as long as you don't enter the metro for the second time.

Note that the entrance into a street vehicle is strictly through the front door (except the trams of the North-West where entrance is allowed through any door as an experiment but you still have to touch any validator inside the vehicle with your card).

* It only matters that you board before the 90 minutes end; then, even if your trip ends up taking more than 90 minutes, you won't be fined.

At the beginning I have the cheapo backpackers Bolshaya Naberezhnaya ulitsa 19 корп. 2 Hostel Wood Owl. I don't think that they have a homepage. But reviews were decent, and what is for me most important it is in walking distance from all my appointments.

I appreciate any info ideas, whatever you think is good to know for me.

Whether to go through Sokol or Tushinskaya when you go sightseeing depends on your destination. The trip times are quite close either way because it takes 10-15 minutes longer to get to the centre from Tushinskaya as opposed to Sokol.

I'm biased towards the tram because route #6 has the most modern vehicles out of those that are available in Moscow, it's a great pleasure to ride, feels like Western Europe

This is partly due to the effort of Max Katz, who is one of the biggest WSOP winners as a staker (his stable had ~50% of Pius Heinz' action at WSOP 2011) but now he's interested in politics and urbanistics and was a representative in the legislative chamber of the Shchukino District of Moscow. And he's fond of trams so apparently, he made sure that those that run through Shchukino are as modern as possible, and in general, he worked hard to turn Shchukino into the local Switzerland

I hope you enjoy your time in Russia, you don't need to do anything for me.

In other news, I'd like to start learning to program in Python for my own needs (which I should have done a year ago ) but the learning curve looks rather hard to me now

I can feel you, since last year my homepage is python and I still didn't do anything about it. Keep finding excuses like, oh I should install Linux first or more stupid thing like soon it will be irrelevant, robot and algorithms will code themselves.

I decided in July I'll go live with a childhood friends and her roommates, they're a bunch of software engineers. If that does not motive me I think I'm a lost cause. Good luck on your side, since we both start from 0 we could learn it togheter. I'm sure you posses the thing I don't have. They keep saying everywhere that you need to find a project to stay motivated. I don't. But I'm sure c00n have some interesting project

Good luck on your side, since we both start from 0 we could learn it togheter. I'm sure you posses the thing I don't have. They keep saying everywhere that you need to find a project to stay motivated. I don't. But I'm sure c00n have some interesting project

Thanks!

Think about any daily / weekly task that you do on your computer manually and that you'd be glad to have automated. If you find one, you'll already have a project to work on that will be relevant to you.

Of course I haven't gone through any tutorials on specifically this language yet, just I have a negative history of being taught C/C++ by very lazy professors at uni for 4 years who failed to teach me to debug properly (the focus was on mathematical algorithm design, and about the only debugging method was the print function).

The most complex things that I can write nowadays are private (user-unfriendly) AHK betscripts for those poker sites that aren't served by public commercial tools (an example was the pre-Microgaming PKR which had the clumsiest software for grinding that I've ever played on) but they tend to be rather buggy.

Just a suggestion:
Take first tutorial in google and go it point for point. One point a day.
I mean it won't make you a python guru, but it is something. If you run into the troubles you always can find some support with this tutorials online, you can post something here. And with doing exactly one point a day, it is not bad, because it is something very measurable. You will have a feeling afterwards that you made a step forward and at the same time it is so small that you don't feel like you have a HUGE workload in front of you. You can post here everyday a short summary, if you like.

I mean I have done it with one tutorial in german and it is something. At least I can put it now on my resume